


lies a bitter heart

by SerpaSas



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Growing Up Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, and then canonical character death again because we can't have nice things, because Bill Macy, because Kieren, canonical resurrection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-27
Updated: 2015-08-27
Packaged: 2018-04-17 14:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4669262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerpaSas/pseuds/SerpaSas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For you, the world ends a couple months before it does for everyone else. When the dead rose from their graves, when they began wandering about and tearing people apart, when the army never came and it fell to civilians to protect their homes- that was what people thought of, these days, when they remember the end of the world. Honestly, when all that shite happened, you were more like, <em>sure, okay. Why the hell not. Everything else has gone to shit.</em></p><p>Your world had ended months before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lies a bitter heart

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this way too long so here, have some Jem feelings

For you, the world ends a couple months before it does for everyone else. When the dead rose from their graves, when they began wandering about and tearing people apart, when the army never came and it fell to civilians to protect their homes- that was what people thought of, these days, when they remember the end of the world. Honestly, when all that shite happened, you were more like, _sure okay. Why the hell not. Everything else has gone to shit._

(you cried, actually, when you realized what was happening, barricaded in your living room with your parents, watching the news, when some high up, important government man was saying _the dead are rising, they are attacking the living, stay inside, in a safe place_ , you curled up into your mum and cried because _hadn't you suffered enough?_

But then you sat up and thought, okay. Zombies. Okay.)

Your world had ended months before.

.

The oldest memory you have of them is this- hiding behind a chair, trying to be quiet. Your mum is folding laundry at the table, and you can see Rick's toes from his own hiding spot. You are four, and the three of you are playing hide and seek; Kieren is trying to find you.

He finds Rick first, because Rick is bigger and it's harder for him to hide, and anyways, he always has trouble keeping quiet around Kier.

Kieren teases Rick about his bad hiding spot, and Rick defends it by giving away yours. You shriek in anger, jumping up and chasing him while calling him names, your mother reminding you all _no running in the house!_

Rick runs outside to appease your mum, you hot on his heels, Kieren right behind you. You know Rick could lose you easy if he tried, he's older than you and has longer legs and plays sports, but he lets you catch him, throwing himself down to the ground when you hit him, like your tackle actually knocked him over. You grab your brother's arm on the way down, pulling him with you, and the three of you land in a pile.

“I give up, you got me, Jem!” Rick laughs, but then reaches around to tickle your stomach. Kieren joins in, and you strike back, tiny fingers wiggling against the underside of his knees until he's laughing helplessly.

Rick switches back and forth between the two of you, and even though you both try to retaliate, Rick isn't ticklish. Yours and Kieren's laughter is infectious, though, and the three of you lie on the lawn in gleeful hysterics long after the tickle war is done. You don't stop smiling until you go to sleep.

.

You are ten years old and feel like a grownup, even though you're too small to reach the shelves and not allowed out alone most of the time. You're still grownup, and you know things. You see things, and understand. You are ten and your brother looks at his bestfriend like he looks at famous art, like it's the most amazing thing he's seen in his life, like he wants to be able to look at it forever.

When you watch closer, you can see Rick looking at Kieren the same way, in quick, furtive glances.

You are ten years old, and not allowed out alone, and never allowed in the woods after dark, but your brother is fourteen and he's there too, even if he doesn't know you're with him as he sneaks out of the house and walks towards the deep darkness of the trees.

The moon is big and round and bright, tonight, the sky clear of clouds. The trees are mostly bare of leaves, letting the light reach your path as you follow Kieren deeper and deeper into the forest.

You follow him all the way to a cave, and you stay at the tree line, huddled and hiding, as you watch Kieren lean against the rock, waiting.

He doesn't have to wait long; Rick shows up less than three minutes later, jogging up to Kier and saying something. Your brother only laughs, grabbing Rick's shoulders and pulling him closer. You think he's going to hug him, but Kieren leans forward too and presses their mouths together.

You are ten and maybe you aren't as grownup as you think you are, because you're too scared to walk home through the forest alone, now, and wait until Rick leaves again, later, much later, you think, and Kieren comes out of the cave, to go to your big brother and have him walk you home. You thought he'd be angry you were spying, but all he says is “You know you can't say anything to anyone about whatever you saw tonight, yeah?”

You are ten and maybe you're grownup and maybe you're not, but you remember a boy in your class was beaten up because one of the other boys had decided he was a queer. Maybe you're grownup and maybe you're not, but you know enough about this world to know Kieren and Rick could get hurt if anyone knew about their cave, their kiss. You are ten and you won't let that happen, never ever, you swear to yourself that you'll keep both of them safe forever, so you look up at Kieren and nod, serious. “I'll never say anything, Kier. Promise.”

Kieren gives you a smile, and squeezes your hand with his own. But he doesn't look less worried, or less sad.

.

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Kieren asks for the fifth time.

You are thirteen and the pistol in your hands feels like it was designed to be there, or maybe like your hands were designed to hold the gun.

Rick is beside you, showing you how to shoot properly, how to shoot straight, how to shoot safe. He turns to Kieren, smiling, and shakes his head. “Come on, Ren,” he says, “I'm just teaching her to shoot a gun. It's just for fun. Not like she'll ever actually need to know how, right?”

You learn to shoot a gun, and learn to hit the target.

Every time you pull the trigger, after- after they die, after the dead rise, after, after- you hear Rick's words in your head, the laughter in his voice. _Not like she'll ever actually need to know how, right?_

.

Kieren is accepted to an art school, and it's the happiest you've ever seen him.

For the past few years, you've grown used to your brother's default face being sad, nervous, uncomfortable. He covered it up with dark fabric, ripped clothes, jackets with spikes and studs, and loud, angry music.

But he doesn't need any of that, right now. The glow of happiness surrounds him for days.

Then, one day, you wake up, and Rick's joined the military.

You think of the last time you saw him, when Kier told him the news. Your parents had been out, and you were spying from upstairs.

Kieren had sounded so happy when he told Rick he had been accepted, and Rick had sounded happy too. Then there had been some wet, sloppy noises, and you decided spying wasn't fun anymore.

You go back downstairs when you hear your parents come home, join them in greeting Rick.

“You heard the good news, then, eh?” your father says, giving Kieren a proud pat on the back.

Rick had nodded, and declined the invitation to stay for dinner.

“Dad wants me home, ye know how he is,” he says, and gives Kieren a look. Kieren nods, smiles. Rick does the same.

On his way out, he gives you a hug. “You be good, Jem.” He says, seriously. “Stay safe.” When he pulls back from the hug, he smiles at you, warm and soft. When he says goodbye, it's much too serious for a random Friday evening, when you're expecting to see him the next day, or sometime soon.

And that's your mistake, because you don't pay attention to how he says _goodbye_ like it's final, like you won't see him again.

You don't see him again. Not alive, anyways.

.

They hear about Rick's death the same way everyone in Roarton hears- on the fourth page of the Roarton Reporter, the town newspaper- or what passes for it- that's delivered weekly. The title of the article reads _Local Hero Killed In Action_ , and when your mother turns the page to see Rick's face gazing up under those damning words, she drops her mug of tea, and it falls, falls, falls, all the way to the kitchen floor, where the tea and milk spill out around shattered ceramic. You're sitting at the kitchen table with her, eating a piece of toast, and when you make sense of those words, make sense of the dropped mug and spilled tea and Rick's smiling face in black and white in the paper, the toast turns to ash, to dirt, to sand in your mouth, in your stomach.

Your father rushes in, drawn by the noise of the shattered mug, by the hitched gasps your mother is making as she shakes her head. You think he asks what's wrong, but by then your ears aren't really working over the sound of your own heartbeat. Steve doesn't ask many questions before he, too, see's the article, and he, too, goes silent. And you can't stand it, can't bear it, you feel like a water balloon being filled to bursting, like a gun that's just had it's trigger pulled and the bullet its pushing out, and you stand and run upstairs, you don't think, you only throw Kieren's door open, and then you freeze.

He's on his bed, with paper and a pencil. You think he's sketching, but then you realize, no, he's writing. He's writing a letter to Rick, like so many other letters he's written and sent and never gotten one back. But Rick is dead and Kieren doesn't know, doesn't know he's writing to a dead boy.

“Jem! What the fuck, every heard of knock-” he cuts himself off when he looks up to you, and you realize you're crying. “Jem? What's wrong? What's happened?”

You take a step into his room, but you see the painting of Rick and you fall because standing takes too much effort and you don't have it right now. Kieren's arms are around you in seconds, and he's comforting you. _He's_ comforting _you_ , because he doesn't know. But you don't know how to tell him, you just don't.

Sue ends up telling him, holding the newspaper to her chest like she wants to hide the truth even as she tells it. You don't remember much after that, because hearing the words aloud makes you breakdown, but you remember Kieren being very, very quiet. He doesn't breakdown. He doesn't even cry.

Later, after you've seen your fair share of death, of people dealing with their worst nightmares, you'll recognize that as shock. 

Kieren goes missing shortly after that, and you're so afraid you tell your father about the cave- it's not like Kieren needs a secret place to meet up with Rick anymore, because Rick is dead (dead, dead, blown to bits in some strange country).

(you wonder sometimes if it wouldn't of been better if you hadn't told him, if they had never found Kieren's body, if it had stayed in that cave that once was a place of love turned to a tomb. You wish you had, when you see Kieren with Lisa's blood on his hands, sunken face. You wish you had left him to be eaten by animals until there wasn't enough of him to Rise.)

(you take it back when he comes home, you do. You wish Lisa was alive, but you wouldn't trade Kieren for it. You couldn't.)

.

The dead Rise, and people are torn apart. You wait for the army, you all wait, but no one comes. Bill Macy knocks on your door one day, tells your father that he's starting his own force to defend the town against the creatures that are attacking it, since no one else seems to be coming. He asks for volunteers, looking between your father and mother like he knows they won't join his militia and is annoyed he's wasting his time.

You grab you coat, tie your hair up and out of your face, mashing your feet into Kieren's old boots, heavy and solid. They make you feel strong, and you say “I'm in.”

Bill looks you over, cocks an eyebrow. You meet his gaze without flinching, don't even blink. He huffs a laugh. “You know how to shoot?”

You remember Rick correcting your stance, teaching you gun safety and how to hit your target. He had called you a natural, and Kieren, long since grown bored, snorted from where he sat in the grass with a sketch pad and pencil, scribbling away. 

You raise a brow right back at Bill, knows what he sees when you looks at you; a fourteen year old girl with dark circles under her eyes, skinny, weak. “I'm a natural,” you tell him.

Someone behind him laughs. Bill only looks at you, hands you a pistol, and says, “Prove it.”

.

When Kieren was your age he was praised for his art, for his ability to create beauty.

There is no beauty in your art, though, no beauty in the way bullets strike your targets. But they _do_ , and that's the important part; you don't miss. You're a better aim than most of the men, better than Bill, and when you go on your first mission, they realize something else about you- you're braver than them.

(you're not. You're a coward inside, you really are, but you can't be afraid anymore. Life doesn't even feel real most of the time, like this is all some horrible dream, and you know what to do, what moves to make, and you know you'll wake up soon, wake up, wake up, _wake up_ -)

They take pictures with their kills, the rotters at their feet like prized hunting trophies. You try to aim for the face when you shoot, try to destroy the identifier, because sometimes you look down and you seen Kieren, you see Rick, you see Henry, you see sweet old Maggie Burton- and you're hit that, oh, this was someone's family.

You check every body the HVF bring in for the bonfires, looking, looking.

It's never Kieren you drag onto the pile for burning, never Kieren you turn your gun on during a mission.

It's never Kieren, until it is.

.

You met Lisa when you were twelve.

She had complimented your jacket, a hand-me-down from Kieren- big, black, and baggy. No one had said anything nice about it even when it was Kieren's. But Lisa liked it, and told you so, and she was your bestfriend from that point on.

When you think of Lisa, you remember this- the night of Kieren's funeral, how you snuck out of the house, couldn't stand the silence, couldn't bare to break it. You ran all the way to the Lancasters, knocked on Lisa's window. She let you in, and you curled up in her bed and cried all night, until her mother came in the next morning and found you, called your parents to let them know you were safe.

(you still don't know if they had been worried, if they had even realized you were gone. You've never asked. You never will.)

When you think of Lisa, you remember this- how red her blood was on the tiled floor, on your brother's dead hands. How you knew, going into that market, that Lisa wasn't going to be coming back with you. As soon as she stopped responding on the radio, you knew. You braced yourself. You were prepared to see your bestfriend dead on the floor.

You weren't prepared to see your brother.

Kieren looked at you, and you looked at him. You thought, _do it. Kill him. It's not like he wanted to be alive anyways._

But you didn't, and you couldn't.

(later, he will tell you he's glad you didn't, that he's happy to be alive- or, still here, at the very least- and you will want to cry)

.

You'd like to say you never killed another one after turning Kieren and the woman- the one who'd introduce herself as Amy, one day- over to the people who don't kill rotters, just trap them and take them, and, they say, treat them- you'd like to say you never put another one down with a bullet through the head, but that'd be a lie.

You don't leave the HVF, you don't stop spending all your time not on missions at the Legion, with Bill and the others, drinking and joking and cleaning your guns. On missions, you don't hesitate. You shoot them in the head and pose over their rotted bodies, burn them until they're ash.

The army comes in, finally, finally, but only to scoop up any rotters that have managed to survive this long. The need for missions becomes less and less, and you can't look at Lisa's parents. You can't look at your own parents.

Life continues, and the world, which had ended, starts up again, businesses opening up and the train running again. People put their weapons away, school starts up regularly. You switch between your home, where you stay in your room and blast the music Kieren had introduced you to, and the Legion, where you stay at Bill's side and show off with what Rick had taught you- he had given you your first sip of beer, had taught you how to shoot, how to throw a punch. You never, ever, mention either of them aloud.

Then, one day, finally, horribly, you get a call from the PDS Treatment Centre.

.

You're the one who answers it, home and out of your room for once. The voice on the line says, _could I speak to Sue or Steve Walker?_ and you hand it over to your mother.

She says things like, _hello?_ and _yes, that's me_ , and then she's sinking to the floor, a hand pressed to her mouth.

“Mum?” you ask, alarmed because there are tears on her face now. Your father enters from the other room, rushing to his wife.

“Sue? Sue, what's wrong?”

There's the mumble of words from the phone, and Sue says, “Yes I'm still here, I'm still here.” and then she looks up at the two of you, and tells you breathlessly, “Kieren's coming home.”

When your father faints, it's not really that unexpected.

.

The thing is- the thing is, when you turned Kieren over, you didn't really think you'd see him again. You had heard they had a cure, now, to make rotter's minds back into who they were before, to make them be able to survive without eating brains.

(back in the early days, Bill had gotten curious and locked a rotter up in his cage, didn't let it eat for days and days. The longer it starved, the more it rotted, until the flesh was falling off it's bones. Someone had eventually got tired of the smell, or maybe the pathetic, horrible, heartbreaking sounds it made all the time and put it down. But that's how they figured out those who had risen ate brains to stop themselves from decomposing. Not for fun, not just mindless violence- for survival. When someone had mentioned that, Dean you think, Bill had glared and told them _and what we're doing is for survival, too,_ and that had been that.)

But that didn't mean you _believed_ them; it had seemed absurd. You weren't even sure if they were telling the truth when they said they weren't killing them. The only other choice, though, would have been the HVF, who would definitely kill Kieren and then expect you to watch as they threw him on a pyre. Your parents would know, with certainty, that their boy was never coming home.

You had taken the better option, and hadn't allowed yourself to dwell. Even when the news that the drug _was_ working, was bringing them back fully, you hadn't thought about it.

It's hard to ignore something when it's watching you with sad, hurt eyes that aren't the right colour, really- the contacts too dull, too generic and mass-produced to be your brothers eyes.

The contacts are better than what you see when you wake him up in the middle of the night- pale and wrong and not human, the black dots of the pupils large in the dark, twitching as he watches you, tells you he's him, tells you something only Kieren knows.

And then you're so mad, so painfully, burningly mad, because he left you without a word, without a note, left you in this world all alone like he was the only one Rick meant something to. Like you hadn't already lost one brother that year.

Kieren was the one who explained to you what death even was, when you were four and the two of you found a chipmunk by the side of the road one day coming home from school. It had been hit by a car, it's entire lower body crushed in a red pulp. It was twitching weakly, and as you watched, it went still.

You know more about death now than you ever even thought there was to learn, back then. You've handed it out and stopped it and nearly experienced it yourself, seen people broken open and torn out, seen the brain matter of both the living and the dead. You've mourned it and celebrated it in equal measure. There's nothing Kieren can teach you about death, anymore.

He's already taught you enough for a lifetime.

.

There's this thing that happens, sometimes- right before you get scared, or angry, or overwhelmed- your ears start roaring, like you've pressed seashells against them, and there's this ringing in your head. Your throat goes dry, and for a second, just a second, nothing makes sense.

When Rick steps out of the truck, real and whole- even if he needs staples to keep him that way, he's still all there- your ears roar louder than they ever have, the ringing in your head is bad enough to hurt, and you couldn't swallow if your life depended on it.

The moment passes, but things don't start making sense.

.

You tell Kieren. Of course you do. You don't go with him to see Rick, even though that Amy girl does. You'll see him in a couple days, give him a hug and probably punch him a little for getting himself killed, for not saying goodbye, for signing up at all.

In a way, you have to get used to him being back before you see him. Otherwise, it'd be like visiting a grave.

.

You never get to hug him, though. Never get to tell him how glad you are he's less dead than previously thought, or show him how good you are with a gun, now.

The first and last time you see him again is on your driveway, slumped over against the garage door. You've learned to tell the difference between a rotter- PDS sufferer- who's dead and one who's _really_ dead, the tiny signs between one who can still jump up and bite and one who won't be doing anything but burning, and Rick is dead, really, truly dead. You can tell even before your fingers find the knife wound in the back of his skull, right where Bill always taught you to aim.

You sit next to the body, and you cry. You must be loud, because your parents come outside quick enough. You sit next to the body while you mum cries, while your dad starts to quietly freak about Kieren, while Ken Burton leaves his house with a shotgun under his arm. You sit with Rick, with what used to be Rick and now isn't anything but a twice dead body stapled together, until Gary comes with his truck and look him dead in the eye with every inch of gunmetal you've ever touched in your eyes, in your spine, until he swears to you the only place he's taking Rick is the funeral home.

You sit in the driveway until you move inside to sit with your dad, and then you sit with Kieren when he comes home, and then you sit by yourself and think about all the times Bill praised you for being a good shot, a good drinker, a good fighter, for being tough. You think about Rick and the shadow of fear his eyes always had when it was time for him to go home. You think about the message Rick left for Kieren, his final words, and when you hear Rick won't be the only Macy being buried, you don't think anything at all.


End file.
